The candles flickered gently, and the little feetless, beakless birds of the coat of arms caught a passing semblance of life other than heraldic. To the priest those bearings were now more familiar than the golden cinquefoils of the name which had once been his. . . . He might almost be a Chantemerle himself by absorption. . . . And suddenly he saw himself, an ageing man, effaced from the memory of his world, more than a little tired with two-and-twenty years of monotonous labour among a people religious indeed, but better served, perhaps, by a priest of their own class, the schoolmaster of two boys who had forgotten his teaching, the friend of two young men who would bring him any troubles but those he most desired to hear, on the verge of being taken away even from what work he had been able to accomplish either for them or for his flock—an ageing man, with nothing done, nothing to show. . . . Yes, the Allwise had indeed taught him his own impotence, even in this lower sphere into which He had thrown him. And yet he was content. He sat there by the bedside, and thought with indescribable horror of those long years when he could not say that. He thought of the times without number when he went through his round of duties, visiting, reading the offices, teaching the two boys, even saying Mass, longing all the while to get away into some solitude where he could throw himself into that conflict which was the outcome of rebellion against his self-imposed sacrifice—a conflict which was all the fiercer because the citadel of his will was never really shaken. Every time, at the end, he made the sacrifice anew; every time he found relief, though it was but the relief of physical exhaustion; every time he was tempted to think that the offering was not accepted, because he was left so long in what he now knew to have been the night of dereliction. How deeply he had learnt during those years the truth of what had been said to him when, clothed in all the first enthusiasm of renunciation, he thought that he had already plumbed the deeps of self-immolation: “You have but entered on the way of sacrifice; I doubt if you will reach your Calvary for many years.” All that strife was over now—had grown weaker and less frequent with time. God had closed that lesson-book; the scholar had learnt content. He was even resigned that the little which was left him, the confidence of the two young men for whom he had come to care so much, should fail him. And he thanked God for the grace to feel this . . . and came out of his reverie.